Timing is Everything
by slytherinsmirk
Summary: Hermione finally works up her nerve to declare her feelings when irony strikes in the worst of ways. Short, PWP, Angsty.


Title: Timing is Everything

Pairing: Snape/Hermione

Warnings: Student/teacher relationship (Hermione is 17), minor HBP spoilers, light foreplay, UST, Angst.

This is my first foray into Harry Potter fanfiction. I am eagerly awaiting feedback of any kind. I didn't originally intend to continue this, but I very well might.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. God, I wish I did, but I don't. I am not making money off of this - unless someone _Obliviated!_ me - so please, don't sue.

She had finally gathered the courage to spill her heart and say what needed to be said, despite the forbidden context of the simple declaration. She had been ready to let those intimate words cross her lips while starring into those complex, knowing eyes, the eyes that entranced her with their glitter of danger, promise of adventure, and mystery still to be raveled.

She had, of course, been nervous, but she was not going to allow herself to be afraid anymore. She knew without a shadow of a doubt he, too, felt the same way. It was tangible in his looks, touches, actions. She had steeled herself for vicious retorts, for awkwardness, for questions, for mocking – yes; she had been prepared for anything.

_Anything_ but irony. What a bitch.

Cold rain had started to fall.

* * *

She knocked tentatively at the door that was still unfamiliar as being Professor Snape's, for this was the year he had been granted his wish of teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. His barked "Enter!" set her at ease with the familiarity that had come from being his student for six years. She entered the room, butterflies dancing in her stomach, tension claiming her muscles, anticipating searing every synapse. She closed the door softly behind her without looking up, but felt his piercing eyes igniting a fire through her skin as effectively as a lit match begin tossed onto gasoline.

"Miss Granger," he drawled softly as she turned to face him. He was seated at the deep brown mahogany desk at the front of the room. She began her ascension into the classroom, moving astride the desks of which was comfortable territory to the front of the room where the man who caused her sweet turmoil sat in the shadows, watching her with interested eyes – far too interested for what she _should_ have been: an average pupil.

"Professor Snape," she returned in greeting. They always addressed each other by appropriate titles – except in those sweltering moments when mental barriers broke down.

She had finally come to stand right in front of her desk. If the lack of words seemed puzzling to Snape, he showed no sign of being befuddled. He simply sat his red-tipped quill aside and settled his elbows on his desk, observing her silently. Tension thickened further as his dark eyes roved her figure sensuously from golden brown untamable curls, to the slight cleavage exposed by her white Oxford shirt, what could be seen of her plaid skirt, and back up to her brown eyes widened in some kind of recognition, cheeks suffused with a blush.

"Difficulties in speaking, Miss Granger?" Snape questioned as he leaned back in his tall wooden chair, arms crossed languidly in front of his chest, eyebrow raised mockingly.

Hermione smiled. "Yes," she admitted, unconsciously stepping closer to the desk until she felt the hard edge of the desk's top meeting her hipbones.

_Why am I standing so close?_ she inwardly cursed herself. In truth, she knew the answer: She could never get close enough – not even when he was buried deep inside of her. It was never enough; it never would be. Throughout these previous months if she had learned anything it was that her thirst for Severus Snape was insatiable.

She opened up her mouth to say what she had known for over six months. It had grown into a living, breathing thing. It was unnecessary to say it. He _had_ to know, even though he had never acknowledged it in spoken or written words. The man was perhaps the best Legilimens in the world, and she had no knowledge of how to control her mind; even if she had, he would have broken right through that barrier, as he did with all others.

Although he probably knew, she would combust now if she did not _say_ it, she knew. She thought he might, too.

Their eyes met heatedly and she found she could not breathe. Her heart certainly was going to explode and if not that, her brain: he had captured that even before her heart. He had captured it all.

She opened her mouth to verbalize the words in her heart, in her mind, in her very soul until he held up a halting hand, picked up his ebony wand and with a swish and non-verbal spell had undoubtedly cast a heavy-duty silencing spell and wards on the classroom door.

"Come," he ordered her, motioning with a gesturing hand for her to travel around the desk – to his side of the desk. She gathered her wits as best she could, and stepped beside his chair, which he slid back from the desk as he stood, his dark presence towering over her. He reached for one of her hands and directed her to lean against his desk, facing him.

Her heart was racing with uncertainty. They had never been this close in his classroom before; it was too risky with watchful eyes lurking about, and Snape was already walking a very fine line, one with all of its complexities that she did not even yet attempt to discern.

But now, Hermione's arse was nestled against the edge of Snape's desk and he was watching her with the most intense of looks, a look that unnerved and excited her simultaneously. He stepped closer to her until she felt a hand on her bare knee, forcing her to open her thighs. At his touch, her nerves over her the words she must say became a thing of the past as a fierce arousal began to flame through her lower belly, her nerves alight with a tingle all meeting to liquify at the crux of her thighs. Her thighs opened for him partially, enough for him to step in between them, forcing her open - almost wantonly - before him.

A finger forced her chin up – although she was already staring at him greedily so as not to miss a moment – and he leaned between the vacant space that still separated them and planted a chaste kiss against her lips, which was perhaps intended as innocent, but created electricity that was inescapable in such moments as these between them.

"Miss Granger, I take it you have something of urgent importance to tell me," he murmured as his thumb drew circles along her jaw line. Entranced by the glitter in his eyes, the arch of his eyebrow, she tried to nod in response, but instead let out a moan as his hips leaned forward, bringing her into contact with his hardened erection nestled against her inner thigh. Just a few inches to the left….

"How articulate," he taunted, head tilting down to press a kiss against her neck.

"Damnit, you know I can't speak when you do – _oh_," she exhaled struggling for what felt like her dying breath as his cock rubbed against the crotch her knickers. Her skirt had somehow became edged up about her hips.

"Tsk, tsk, Miss Granger, respect. I shall be address as _sir_," Snape murmured into her neck in between the hot pecking of kisses and flicking of his tongue over the roadway of her veins on her sweet column of throat. He sucked the edge of her collarbone in between thin lips.

"Yes, sir," she panted obediently, her hands burying into his dark lank hair, massaging his scalp in effort to push him further.

He growled as he pinned her effectively against the hard wood of the desk, grabbed her hands from his hair and pulling them behind her in a grip that would leave tell-tale signs of bruises. Her favorite kind.

"Now, I believe you had something to tell me?" he asked seriously, as the fingers of his free hand played with the buttons of her shirt.

"Yes, sir."

He arched an eyebrow in question. He would have yelled at anyone else, but he kept a cap on his patience in front of her, perhaps out of….love?

She felt the world spinning around her, arousal zinging through her nerves, logic faltering her for one of the few times in her life; but what overpowered her more was her heart egging her on. She needed to say this. She needed him.

How hard could it be?

"I--" she began.

"You what?" he exhaled breathlessly, catching her earlobe between his teeth.

"I…" she started again.

Teeth sunk into her ear, drawing blood. "_Fuck!" _he cursed, teeth releasing her ear, hand dropping her wrists still pinned behind her back. He was reaching for his left forearm…

_No, no. Not now…_ Hermione thought miserably.

But, it was indeed now. Snape lifted the sleeves of his heavy black robes to reveal a red Dark Mark standing out in sharp relief against pale skin.

"Sir.." she began.

"No," he said simply, pushing away from her as if she were to cause him immediate death. Perhaps she was.

"I can wait till you get back…" she began.

"No." He wasn't looking at her now. He was looking in a closet behind his desk, pulling out scrolls of parchment.

_Say it now! _something screamed inside of her. "I love—" she began.

"_NO!"_ he barked, dropping the scrolls in a rush of madness and pushed her back roughly against the desk, her tailbone cracking painfully in the silent room. The glittering in his eyes was dead. "Go back to your dormitory now," he instructed.

"Sir, I just—" she began again.

"You just wanted to say that you _love_ me?" he chuckled sarcastically. He stopped to study her, no doubt seeing the beginning of tears forming in her eyes, eyes willing a message to him, wanting him to believe that someone could in fact love him – even when he did not love himself and maybe never would. She loved him for him, not in spite of anything.

He stepped toward her again. She turned her head to the side, refusing to look at him, bracing herself for the emotional torment that would doubtlessly follow.

"Hmm, perhaps you do love me, Miss Granger," he drawled, twirling a curl around one long, solitary finger. "But, you are mistaken, I believe."

Her eyes looked up at his, dreading what was to come next.

"I am afraid, my dear, that I do not share the sentiment. You have been what I believe my fellow Death Eaters would term –ah - a _plaything_," he murmured, still twirling the curl in a loving gesture that was indeed subtle cruelty.

Hermione couldn't breathe yet again, except now her heart wasn't on fire from the excitement of love; the ashes of what could have been were being blown away in a torrent of cold wind.

"You don't believe that," Hermione whispered, tears beginning to form in her eyes.

"I do," he said simply as he kissed the first saccharine tear that rolled down her face.

"_Severus_." He stilled, holding her gaze. "You can't do this," she urged, trying to make him realize he didn't have to run, didn't have to protect her. Perhaps she was getting through…

He hissed. The Dark Mark had flared again.

"Fifteen points from Gryffindor for disobeying a direct order," he barked, "I will make it more of if you do not get out of my sight now, Miss Granger, and _stay out _of my sight."

She looked him for one moment longer, willing him to believe what lay in her heart, trying to read his before turning and walking along the desks again, which didn't seem as comforting now that the barrier had been broken for good.

* * *

And there she stood outside, near the lake, drenched in the rain, waiting for him to return from the Death Eater meeting smelling of blood and sex and of all things vile.

She knew now he loved her, but was just refusing to be with her out of fear – for her safety and of love, and his dangerous position in the war.

She would make him see reason.

She hoped.

For now, the drizzling rain alleviated the fire of her heart, bringing way to a musing of the irony of the Dark Mark's chosen time of flaring.

Voldemort did indeed destroy everything good in the world.

They needed to win the war – and soon – for all of their sakes.


End file.
